


chaos of creation

by Atherys



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Chaos, Christmas, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, John POV, SO MUCH FLUFF, chaotic christmas celebrating ahahah, secretsantastuck, sneakily sneaks in ace!john headcanon. very sneakily.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 10:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atherys/pseuds/Atherys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The kitchen is covered in flour.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Or, well, you suppose covered is a bit too strong a word, but it sure is messy in there. There are eggshells all over the counter, smoke rising from the oven, you think you just saw Nepeta duck around the corner with a mixing bowl on her head, and-</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Karkat, is that butter in your hair?” </i>
</p><p>He'd left them alone for <i>one hour</i>. Apparently, that is plenty enough time to wrech havoc everywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chaos of creation

The kitchen is covered in flour.

Or, well, you suppose _covered_ is a bit too strong a word, but it sure is messy in there. There are eggshells all over the counter, smoke rising from the oven, you think you just saw Nepeta duck around the corner with a mixing bowl on her head, and-

“Karkat, is that _butter_ in your hair?”

He flinches and turns around to face you, one hand instantly flying up to his head. It comes down sticky. He stares at it as if it holds the answer to all of life’s mysteries. “Um. Maybe?”

…and Karkat has somehow gotten butter in his hair. Okay. You can deal with this, it’s fine, everything is fine, you-

“ _Duck!”_ someone yells from behind you and you react instinctively, throwing yourself to the floor.  A plate flies over your head and is just about to hit the wall and probably shatter into a thousand pieces when the red-bluey thing you’ve learned to identify as Sollux’s psionics grabs it and pulls it back. A few seconds later there is a crash and a yell and yep, that was probably the plate breaking.

“ _God fucking damn it,_ guys!” Karkat yells, dropping the ladle he had been holding and stalking away towards the sound, trying to wipe his hands off at his pants. “I fucking _told_ you, _no dueling!_ ”

You stay down, staring up at the ceiling. Eridan’s scarf is stuck in the ceiling fan, spinning round and round and round. Staring at it is actually quite calming. You think you might just stay like this and not move for the rest of the day. It seems like the safest option.

You’d been gone for _an hour,_ you think to yourself. _One hour._

This settles it. You’re never leaving them alone again. You’ll stay at home forever, or you’ll- you’ll hire a _babysitter_ , yeah, you’ll-

The fire alarm starts beeping and you’re on your feet again in less than a second, ready to use your windy-powers(or, well, what’s left of them) to extinguish the fire, but all you’re faced with is the dark smoke bellowing from the oven. Right. That.

“Oh my god, will someone turn that thing _off_?” you hear Karkat shouting from the second floor.

“Sure thing, KK,” comes the reply, and you realize what ‘turning off’ is going to mean this time a little too late. The alarm breaks with a little explosion and a nearly insultingly low ‘puff’, sad little sparks falling to the floor.

How are these people even still _alive?_  

You walk over to the window, opening it up in order to get some of the smoke out of the room, and then carefully make your way to the oven, holding your breath. Grabbing an oven mitt from the table, you reach over and pull the oven open, eyes watering.

They’d been making muffins.

You take a second look around the kitchen, taking in the chaos surrounding you.

They’d been making _muffins_.

“Oh my god,” you mutter hopelessly, dropping your head into your hands. “Oh my _god._ ”

“That appears to be an appropriate reaction to this situation, yes,” comes an amused voice from the door. You turn around to see Rose calmly looking around, casually picking at a stray thread from the green sweater she’s wearing. You’re, like, 90% sure Kanaya made her that. Rose has spent the last couple of weeks teaching her to knit, in exchange for being taught about troll culture. You don’t really see what’s so interesting, but hey, who are you to judge?

“ _Rose_ ,” you whine, dramatically stumbling over to her and falling into her arms. “ _Rooooose_ , where have you _been_? Why didn’t you help them? Actually, scratch that, why didn’t you _stop_ them?” You pull back to give her an accusing glare. She just smiles and flicks you on the forehead.

“I’ve been… preoccupied,” she says, her smile growing slightly and her tongue flicking out to wet her lips. Standing this close, you notice the small stain of green lipstick still left in at the corner of her mouth. The connection isn’t really that hard to make.

“Oh I did _not_ need that mental image today,” you say with a disgusted groan, rubbing your eyes frantically. As if that’d help. “ _Ew._ ”

“Too bad,” she says breezily, turning to leave the kitchen. “You might want to check your room,” she calls as she walks up the stairs. “I think Vriska tried to make a snowman for you.”

“Awww,” you say, your mood picking up a little. “That’s really sweet of her!”

You smile and is just about to go outside to have a look when you realize. You were outside like, fifteen minutes ago. Vriska was not there. There was no snowman. The yard is snowfilled, yes, but empty.

“Oh no _way_ ,” you mutter, nearly flying up the stairs in your haste to reach your room. You pointedly ignore the crashes and shouts coming from the living room, make sure not to look in Rose’s room and pull the door to yours open with your breath caught in your throat, only to be hit with a snowball square in the face.

There is a moment of perfect silence, and then the snow drops from your face and you can see.

“Um,” Vriska says. She’s crouching next to your bed, cheeks blushed blue from the cold(and you will never get used to the whole different-blood-colors thing, it’s kind of freaky and _really cool_ ), another snowball firmly clutched in her hand and a pile of snow gathered by her feet. On the carpet. There is snow. In your room.

“ _Um_ ,” she says again and then comes the cackle that is Terezi’s trademark laughter from the hallway and her eyes widen, “John, you might want to duck-”

Another snowball hit you in the back of your head.

“-too late,” she finishes, smiling at you in a way that tries and fails miserably at looking guilty. “Oops?”

You exhale slowly, steadily, determined to keep your cool. You are _so_ cool right now. Dave would be impressed. Speaking of which, where the fuck is Dave? Okay, no, no time to think about that right now. At least _he_ is unlikely to be tearing the house down somehow.

You are _never_ leaving them alone again.

“Vriska,” you say, carefully stepping out of the way as Terezi barrels into the room only to trip over your foot(which you definitely did not deliberately trip her with holy shit what are these outrageous accusations) and fall head-first into the pile of snow, “why are you having a snowball fight _inside_?”

She stares blankly at you and shoves Terezi’s face back down in the snow.

“There is snow. In my room. Why.”

“ _Oh_ ,” she says and _giggles_ , “Oh, that.”

You wait. Nothing happens. (Or, well, Terezi tries to stand back up again but Vriska seems pretty determined not to let her, so there’s that. What you _mean_ is she isn’t answering you.)

“ _Vriska._ Why is there snow in my room?”

“Rel _ax_ , John,” she says, drawing the word out and rolling her eyes, “We’re just having some _fun_. You told us no FLARPing-“

“- because we don’t want any _casualties_ , yeah-“ you interject but she continues as if you haven’t said anything at all,

“-and no fighting and we were _bored!_ But Karkat found this _great_  book or something about human traditions, and there were all these things about ‘Christmas’, and Dave said snowball fights were a definite _must_ if there was snow!”

“Okay,” you say. Calmly. Very calm. And cool. Yes. “ _Why_ did you decide to have it _inside_?”

“What, you mean we should be _out_ there?” she says, wrinkling her nose. “But John, it’s _cold_.”

You stare. The silence stretches out. She fidgets, growing increasingly uncomfortable until she sheepishly lets go of Terezi, who takes one deep sniff and laughs before leaving. “Hey, coolkid,” she calls in a sing-song voice, “I think Vriska broke John again!”

“Why you-“Vriska mutters and bolts, leaving you staring at the wall in helpless confusion. You hear Terezi yelp and laugh as they run off to who-knows-where. There is another crash, most likely a vase or possibly a mirror, followed by an “oops” and a loud laugh.

Okay, this is _it._ “ _Karkat,_ ” you shout, stomping back down into the kitchen, “ _Leader’s conference!_ Get down here _right now!!!_ ”

\-----

Five minutes later and you, Karkat, Sollux(“I don’t trust them not to kill each other if left unsupervised,” he’d said, glaring at Sollux, who just smirked in a way that convinced you Karkat was probably right this time), and Aradia(who followed Sollux) were standing in the room, silently looking at the destruction.

“So…” you say, lightly prodding Karkat, “feel like explaining what happened here?”

“Nope,” he says shortly, crossing his arms in front of his chest and does that little thing where he hunches forward a bit like he’s trying to fold into himself and disappear without anyone noticing.

Aradia rolls her eyes. “Karkat, stop that,” she says as she turns towards you. Her hair is tangled even worse than Gamzee’s usually is(which is _a lot_ ), and there is flour on her jumper and the tip of her nose, so you conclude that she was also a part of the ‘wrecking-the-kitchen-team’. “We just wanted to bake! Karkat told us it was what people did when Christmas came around, and he’d found a recipe, and, well, it really sounded like fun! And _then_ …” she hesitates and takes a second look at the kitchen before smiling sheepishly and shrugging, “well, I guess it went kind of… overboard.”

“ _Kind of_ ,” you say. “Well, at least no one got hurt. But, um, just, out of pure curiosity…”

You walk over to the cupboards where your dad would always keep all the(cue shiver) Betty Crocker products, pull it open and frown. “You _do_ know there’s tons of muffin mix, right? We always stock up.”  
  
Karkat looks away. “Yeah, I saw it. I just thought…we could make some from scratch.”  
  
Aradia blinks and then narrows her eyes dangerously. “Are you telling me that we had _muffin mix_ and we wasted all that time alchemizing butter and flour? Why didn’t we just use that?”

Sollux looks like he’s having some kind of seizure behind her, grabbing the counter to keep from falling as he shakes with contained laughter. At least _someone_ is still able to see the humour in the situation, you suppose. Karkat sure isn’t.  
  
“ _Because,_ Aradia, the human tradition of bonding over baked goods can’t just be half-assed. You have to put some effort into it.”  
  
“It doesn’t make any difference, Karkat. It’s just a dessert.”  
  
“No! It’s all wrong!” he shouts, banging his fist down on the counter. “All I wanted is for us to try and have a _nice, normal, human Christmas,_ but I guess we just aren’t allowed to do _anything_ right without everything _screwing us over all the fucking time!”_   
  
The only sound in the room is the gentle flapping of Eridan’s scarf.  You hold your breath, not wanting to set him off. Aradia and Sollux seem stunned. There is a rustling, and Nepeta pops her head into the room, tinsel wrapped around her neck like a boa.

“Karkat!” she squeals, seemingly completely oblivious to the tension in the room and bounces over to him, throwing her arms around him. “Come, Equius is helping me decorate the tree! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

She grabs his arm and drags him out of the room before any of you have the time to react. Stronger than she looks, that one, you think before turning to Aradia and Sollux, still staring after Karkat.

“I didn’t know he felt that strongly about it,” Aradia says hesitantly. “Sollux, I’ve asked you to _tell_ me if I’m crossing lines! Why didn’t you warn me I was making him upset?”

Sollux rolls his eyes before reaching out and grabbing her hands, pulling her in closer. “Calm _down_ , AA,” he says, bumping their foreheads together. “You weren’t crossing lines. He’s just being a douchebag, that’s all.”

She mumbles something you can hear, and yeah, you’re kinda feeling like you’re intruding on something now, so you decide to just. Leave. Before they start kissing or whatever they’re going to do, standing so close together and wow _why is everyone always doing that?_ Have some _discretion_ , guys, jeez.

You slowly back out of the kitchen to embark on your next great quest; finding Karkat again. Nepeta said they were decorating the tree(where the fuck did they get a Christmas tree?), so you assume that means they are in the living room. The same living room as Sollux and Eridan were previously fighting in.

You don’t want to go in there. It feels like a bad idea. A really, really bad idea, and nope, that most certainly does _not_ have anything to do with the fact that you don’t want to know how many things they managed to break and how could you ever suggest such a preposterous thing?

Maybe you could just go find Dave or Jade instead?

\------

It  doesn’t actually look as bad as you’d feared. Sure, there are pieces of that plate and also glass on the floor, but it’s all neatly swept into a pile, so it doesn’t bother you much. The blood splattered on the couch is slightly worse, but as much as it looks like someone has committed murder, you saw Sollux only seconds ago, and Eridan is right over there in the corner, being taken care of by an exasperated Feferi, so you suppose it’s all fine. Technically.

A low noise from the other side of the room make you turn, noticing the Christmas tree. Or, well. Kind-of-christmas-tree? It looks like one of Dave’s shitty drawings, all garishly green with branches spread all over the place, despite looking suspiciously two-dimensional. It is also quite possibly the ugliest thing you have ever seen.

Nepeta and Equius are standing right by it, Karkat a bit to the side, looking mortified. Equius doesn’t look much better off.

“Nepeta, I am not sure this is a good idea-“

“Hush, Equius!” she says, balancing on top of his shoulders with a small plastic thing you think is supposed to be an angel clutched in her hand. “It is _the best_ idea! Come on, just a liiiittle bit higher!”

He swallows nervously but obeys, lifting his hands in order to let her stand on them as she keeps reaching for the top.

…you’re not even going to try interfering with that, those two kind of scare you at times(well, actually they _all_ do, but, hey, everyone’s got weird quirks, right?).

“Karkat!” Nepeta calls out from above you and for a second you think she’s going to fall, but when you look up she’s still perfectly balanced and concentrated. You’re not sure if you’re freaked out or impress. “You’re supposed to be putting the glitter up, silly!”

You look over at Karkat, finding him nearly buried under the Christmas lights and glitter garlands. Had they alchemized those? You really hope they work properly… 

There are footsteps in the stairs, a small shriek and then chaos arrives. You turn towards the door just in time to see Vriska duck, the snowball Terezi had thrown at her flying across the room, hitting Equius right in the neck. He yelps and stumbles, Nepeta mirroring the sound of surprise as she lost her footing, the small decoration she’d been holding crashing to the floor only seconds before Equius steps forward to help her regain her balance-

-only to walk into the Christmas tree, toppling it over. It falls to the floor with a loud crash, Nepeta letting out a small shout as she lands on top of Equius. The room is completely silent. You carefully turn your head to look at Karkat.

He’s staring at them with an incredulous look on his face, gaping speechlessly. At the other end of the room, Feferi starts to giggle. The laughter is contagious, spreading through the room until there’s nothing to do but to laugh along at the complete ridiculousness of the situation.

There is blood on your couch, flour all over the kitchen and a fallen Christmas tree in the living room.

Somehow, when you see them laugh, you don’t really mind at all.


End file.
